Nor that the election would go to seven months after the voting.
Do the names “Ventura” and “Schwarzenegger” ring any bells?
Ask the guys who sued to have Obama declared ineligible for the presidency over the birth-certificate thing.
Maybe Senator Blutarski can give a fiery speech to rally ol’ Norm’s spirits in his hour of need:
Most people back then had lives and missed it. Others, like me, had VCRs, and we saw it and its reruns. I’ll toss you into the former group; life is happier there. 
ETA: To describe what a pathetic soul I am, I waited through the Late 80s and well into the 90s for a similar announcement and wasn’t surprised when, TEN YEARS LATER!, it arrived.
Minnesota. Land of 10,000 Lakes.
And now home to the Wit and the Twit.
I think you misspelled that last word.
At the end of 1989 (exactly 10 years after the annoucement of the Al Franken decade in 1979), Al brought his five-year old son Joe onto SNL and declared that the '90’s would be the Joe Franken decade.
And a Political Science degree from Harvard…so theres that.
Never heard of them.
No, that’s not what I am saying, that it’s somehow bad or even unprecedented. I’m just kind of amazed by it. He did the work, and he got enough votes to win, and now he is going to be a Senator. I bet he is a little surprised himself at the moment.
The Al Franken Decade thing is funny because it is sarcastic and self-deprecating. Now that it can be interpreted seriously, I think we’re in many ways down the rabbit hole. If he can use his residual fame and still be the sensible, humorous guy I find him to be in his books, maybe he will be a new kind of senator.
I still want to see him do his Paul Tsongas impression at a Senate prayer breakfast or something…
Dunno about that. I think Franken might consider imitating a twelve-years dead guy to be outside the bounds of good taste.
Or maybe just not topical enough.
This is excellent news for the McCain campaign.
The WSJ sums things up nicely:The ‘Absentee’ Senator Franken wins by changing the rules.
The GOP is just going to have to try harder if it ever wants to win any elections ever again.
I never took the WSJ for a satirical news outlet. I’ll have to give them a second look.
Stupid question time (REALLY stupid question): Does Al get to serve six years from today?
While the WSJ has always had a hard fiscal right editorial policy, I never thought I’d see the day that they’d crib from Free Republic.
The WSJ is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, so that’s why it looks like worldnetdaily these days. Kind of sad, actually. It used to be a legitimate publication.
No; his term ends the same date it would have if the election results had been undisputed.
What he said.
ETA: And no, the term will end as originally scheduled. The machinations of Coleman have stolen 6 months from the term, roughly.
I’d forgotten about that.